The other day, I found myself discussing the Puella Magi Madoka Magica anime with Okazu Superhero and good friend Bruce. We agreed that, for us, the sign of excellence in a series could be boiled down to one quality – the ability to withstand continuing critical review. No matter what angle you take, Revolutionary Girl Utena can withstand critical review – it has a lot of material to discuss, to analyze, to critique and criticize. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon, as much as I adore it…really doesn’t hold up well under critical review. The repeated footage is not meant symbolically or ironically – it was just a money saver. The Monsters of the Day are not clever social commentary. Yes, the Senshi themselves are archetypes, but that’s about as far as one can take a discussion of Sailor Moon, before one has to invoke its effect on increasing the market for shoujo manga, or rely on discussion of shoujo tropes. By this standard then, both Bruce and I felt that the Madoka anime was excellent. It holds up under critical review of plot, character or visuals.

One of the key visual elements of the anime was Kyuubey’s unchanging face. It was that – and solely that – that was the first screaming red siren for me. He’s cute, carefully crafted to have an honest, open, trustworthy face. Everything about Kyuubey screamed “RUN!” at me. Which is why I wrote this helpful guide What You Need to Know To Become a Magical Girl, which so many people completely failed to understand.

Which of course, is the very basic premise of Madoka. We need to learn to think critically. Not cynically, not paranoically…critically.  We need to learn to ask good questions to get good answers – and we need to learn to understand the answers we receive.

In Volume 2 of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Sayaka becomes the second sacrifice to lack of critical thinking skills. What questions might she have asked if she was older, more experienced or wiser? What might she have heard – both said and unsaid –  in the answers she received? But we cannot blame Sayaka, really, or Madoka. They are children, being manipulated by a creature with the balance of power and information on his side. And this brings me to the only comment I have about this book. The art ruined it. The whole point of Kyuubey is that we never know what he is thinking, that we only ever see that trustworthy face. By giving him an “evil” face at the end of the volume, the manga artist has crushed one of the key visual elements of the story, rendering it a comic for children, not for adults. Volume 3 will play out as we already know it must, but I no longer trust the manga to tell the tale well enough to hold up under critical review.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 6, but only because the art has positioned itself as an enemy to the plot
Characters – 6
Yuri – 1
Service – 2

Overall – 5

Many, many thanks to Okazu Superhero Andreas L for giving me the chance to look at this manga critically. ^_^

The trend in anime, right now, is to draw from Light Novels or Games. But there has always been a steady subset of entertainment properties created specifically to be “saturation series.” Some series graduate to the position of what I’m calling a “saturation” series – take Neon Genesis Evangelion. It was a popular anime, that lingered long after its initial popularity faded in the unlikely form of pachinko machines, until it went through a renaissance and burst back on to the scene with anime movies, manga, new games and related goods.

But of all the saturation series I have experienced in my time as a fan, Madoka is different. Released as anime, manga, light novels and games simultaneously, it exploded like a nova on the Japanese market, related goods everywhere, in every form possible. It was like all the Evangelion lessons of the years had been absorbed and BAM! Madoka radiated beams of media tie-in goods to every single consumer outlet in Japan.

That might have happened here in the west as well, but for three things – Yen and Aniplex didn’t coordinate even a little, so Yen’s printed matter couldn’t use the anime as a funnel for interest and there is, still, pretty much no organized consumer goods distribution in the US for anime-related goods. So, sure, at a con you could find eight thousand Kyuubey-related thingamabobbers, but there wasn’t the high water mark of saturation that those games, figurines, more figurines, even more figurines, extraordinary amounts of clothing, bags, random household goods of varying utility and other toys achieved in Japan.

So, Yen published the Puella Magi Madoka Magica manga and, like, no one noticed. Okay, yes, you can pull up a few reviews if you search for the title and “manga” and “review,” but compare those results to the  paeans of joy and screams of outrage about the anime….

Part of the problem is the above issue of release timing, lack of promotional tie-in, etc and partially, the manga just doesn’t have the impact the anime did. It’s the same story, of course, truncated from the time it takes to watch 12 episodes full of distracting visual imagery to the time it takes to read not quite 200 pages of a comic with somewhat less compelling visuals.

I almost never complain about the art in a manga. I can’t draw, so even the worst art is better than I can do. And really, the art here isn’t awful, it’s just inconsistent in a way that is obvious even to me, and frequently weirdly out of proportion – and not in a cool way. The art has all the hallmarks of a person who learned to draw manga by copying manga, but who never took any life drawing classes.

Other than that, the only true difference is the issue of pacing. I can’t watch a 22-minute episode faster than in 22 minutes. The pacing of the story is not for me to chose. I read insanely fast and as a result, the pacing of this manga was at full speed as I zammed through the volume. It wasn’t compelling enough for me to slow down. This is not to say this manga is, in any way, bad. I just never felt like I wanted to spend extra time with it.

Lastly, there is actually more Yuri in the manga series than there was in (at least my memory of) the anime. Madoka’s friend Hitomi keeps insisting that Madoka and Sayaka are in a relationship. Sayaka doesn’t help by playing the butch to Madoka’s femme – something I do remember from the beginning of the anime. Homura is…Homura, in this first book. Nothing indicative of what will or might come in the second volume. Mami is the perfect sempai, ripe for admiration, until she’s not. So, not like loads of Yuri, but more than I remember from the first half of the anime.

Ratings:

Art – 5
Story – 7
Characters – 6 They almost seem synopses of themselves
Yuri – 4
Service – 2

Overall – 6

It really wasn’t a bad manga, but when compared with the anime and the novels, it comes out on bottom. My very sincere thanks to Okazu hero Andreas L for his very kind sponsorship of today’s review!